Libra Foundation

OVERVIEW: Human rights is the Libra Foundation’s largest area of giving and serves as the basis for its three grantmaking initiatives: Criminal Justice and Social Justice, Environmental and Climate Justice and Gender Justice.

IP TAKE: The Libra Foundation takes a “ground up” approach to “building community power” and makes grants largely through a racial justice lens. While not the most accessible funder, it is very transparent about where its money goes. Libra prefers a proactive grantmakig approach, but prospective grantees can email general inquiries to the foundation’s staff, profiles of whom are posted on its website. It is responsive and somewhat approachable. Grants are typically for general support. It is open-minded with regards to how it makes grants and what it chooses to fund. However, this is a crowded grantmaking space. Grants fund organizations for multiple-cycles making it harder for new groups to gain attention. In February 2024, the Libra Foundation announced a search for a new president, so it remains to be seen how this will influence grantmaking priorities and strategies.

PROFILE: The Libra Foundation was founded in 2002 by members of the Pritzker Family. In 2017 the foundation’s board hired Crystal Hayling to lead the foundation in its essential work: supporting “frontline organizations building a world where communities of color thrive” and “working towards justice and equity that center the voices and experiences of those disproportionately harmed by systemic oppression.” Based in San Francisco, the foundation’s three stated program areas are community safety and justice, environmental and climate justice and gender justice.

The Libra Foundation’s grantmaking approach is centered on a commitment to “supporting organizations led by those most impacted by systemic oppression – largely low-income communities of color” that work on the “frontlines” of the communities they serve. Libra spells out its process in great detail, which is worth diving into. Human rights and a commitment to BIPOC-led work are thorough lines across all of the Libra Foundation’s grantmaking.

Grants for Human Rights and Criminal Justice

The Libra Foundation’s Community Safety and Justice program supports reimagining “safety, community-defined restoration, and the end of mass incarceration and criminalization.” This funding area intersects human rights work with criminal justice reform, though this is not a hard and fast rule.

  • Libra believes that “strategies using a healing and transformational justice approach brings us closer to decarceration, the abolition of jails and policing, and closer to the liberation of those disproportionately oppressed by our current criminal injustice system, including Black, Brown, Indigenous, trans, and low income people.”

  • Recent grantees include grassroots and large global nonprofits and NGOs to which the foundation tends to make large, multi-year commitments.

  • Specific areas of interest include multi-national coalition building, advocacy, policy development and “communications strategies for social change.”

  • Grantees related to human rights include the Texas-based Border Network for Human Rights, organizes communities near the U.S.-Mexico border to advocate for immigration reform and human rights. Other past grantees include the Fund for Global Human Rights, the Global Fund for Children, the Global Fund for Women, Human Rights First and Columbia University Law School’s Human Rights Institute. 

  • Grantees related to criminal justice include the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, aims to end extreme sentencing for convicted minors, including life without parole. Other criminal justice grantees include Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, the Network on Women in Prison, Los Angeles’s Initiate Justice, the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People and Families Movement and the Tides Foundation’s Life Comes from It initiative. 

Search grantees related to this giving area here.

Grants for Racial Justice and Indigenous Rights

The Libra Foundation conducts its grantmaking through a racial justice and equity lens. As a result, it provides broad support for racial justice and indigenous rights organizations in the U.S. with grants from across all three its program areas.

In light of May 2020 after the death of George Floyd, the Libra Foundation, in partnership with eleven other philanthropic organizations, launched the Democracy Frontlines Fund, which is an aligned giving strategy leveraging $36 million in multiyear unfettered support for a Slate of ten exemplary Black-led organizations.

  • The grantees, selected by a Brain Trust of movement advisors who are all women of color, are working for racial justice, free and fair elections, and to defund the police.

  • The focus and intent is building power at the community level.

The Libra Foundation’s grantmaking for racial justice and equity ultimately center on a “learning journey to confront the legacy of racism and begin to transform philanthropy from the inside out.”

Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy

Through the foundation’s Environmental and Climate Justice program, Libra aims to support organizations “led by and for people and communities who are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, environmental harm, and systemic racism.”

  • This giving area prioritizes “community-powered organizations and formations working together to organize locally, trans-locally, and beyond.”

  • Grantmaking in this area overlaps significantly with the foundation’s racial and indigenous justice work.

  • The foundation’s climate change funding is global in scope, but most grants support U.S.-based organizations.

  • Recent multi-year grants have supported the Global Greengrants Fund, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, EarthRights International and the Asian-Pacific Environmental Network.

  • In the U.S., the foundation has given to the California Environmental Justice Alliance, Montana’s Indigenous Environmental Network, Pesticide Action Network North America and Chicago’s Center for Neighborhood Technology, which is committed to sustainable urban development in the interest of building equitable communities. 

Grant seekers can learn more about what kinds of grantees receive funding through this program by searching Libra’s extensive grant database.

Grants for Women and LGBTQ+ causes

Libra supports women’s and girls’ causes through its Gender Justice program, which aims to dismantle gender-based oppression and violence.

  • The Libra Foundation seeks to include “women, girls, gender-expansive and non-conforming, queer, and trans people” through this area of funding.

  • Centered on racial justice, Libra’s Gender Justice program invests in strategies that “address the root causes of gender injustice by unpacking how patriarchy, racism, white supremacy, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia and sexism affect the lives of all people.”

  • Grantmaking in this area has focused on reproductive health and justice, gender-based violence and coalition building among organizations in areas disproportionately affected by gender injustice.

  • Global grantees include the African Women’s Development Fund, the Global Fund for Women, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Women’s Link Worldwide, which works to advance the rights of women facing multiple forms of oppression.

  • U.S. grantees include New Mexico’s Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the National Network of Abortion Funds and the Chicago Foundation for Women. 

  • LGBTQ+ funding tends to be global in scope and has supported several organizations involved in coalition building. Recent grants for LGBTQ+ causes include the Astraea Lesbian Fund for Justice, the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, the Trans Justice Funding Project and Trans United. 

To learn more about grants available through this program, search Libra’s grant database to get a clearer idea of what it seeks to fund.

Important Grant Details:

The Libra Foundation made about $25 million in grants in a recent year. Most of its grants fall in the $75,000 to $500,000 range, but some of the foundation’s multi-year commitments have reached the $2 million to $4 million range.

  • For additional information about past grantees, see the foundation’s grantee partners page. 

  • This funder does not accept unsolicited proposals for funding, but organizations may reach out with general inquiries via LinkedIn.

  • The foundation posts biographies of its team members on its website. 

Grant seekers may contact the Libra Foundation at info@thelibrafoundation.org.

PEOPLE:

Search for staff contact info and bios in PeopleFinder (paid subscribers only). 

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